Smile (a Japanese Mighty Ducks movie?)
Posted by japanstats on 2008 January 8日 Tuesday
This is basically the Japanese version of Mighty Ducks, without the big corporate backing, as this was a personal pet project of the director Jinnai who fell in love with hockey when he became a hockey dad. It’s amazing that that the project got the go ahead at all, as hockey has been used in major Japanese dramas and movies only once within the last 10 years (weekly TV drama “Pride” with heart throb Kimura Takuya of SMAP who looked like bambi on skates in the starring role.)
The acting is typical for Japanese dramas and movies that don’t make it overseas (ie. cheesy overacting that seem to mimic manga and anime). But there’s enough entertainment packed into the movie and it’s fairly well edited, so it feels shorter than the actual nearly 2 hour running time. Oh yeah, and one of my new favourite geinoujin (TV personality/actor) Kato Rosa’s in it 🙂
http://go-smilers.jp/index.html
Japan, Hockey, Baseball, etc. 
TV Movies Soaps » Smile (a Japanese Mighty Ducks movie?) said
[…] Japanese Ice Hockey, etc. placed an observative post today on Smile (a Japanese Mighty Ducks movie?)Here’s a quick excerptThe acting is typical for Japanese dramas and movies that don’t make it overseas (ie. cheesy). … Oh yeah, and one of my new favourite geinoujin (TV personality/actor) Kato Rosa’s in it http://go-smilers. jp/index. html… […]
simoncurrie said
Thanks TV Movie Soaps! You’re the first ever non-spam comment on this new blog. I just saw this popcorn movie last night, and was pleasantly surprised to find it pretty entertaining.
Deanna said
Actually, this movie had some pretty big financial backing from McDonald’s, didn’t it? I thought I read that somewhere (in addition to the obvious amount of McD’s stuff in the movie itself, and I saw a whole bunch of ads for the movie at the McDonald’s near where I work in Kita-ku, too).
To be fair, I’m not even that much into hockey and I went to see Smile twice. I just thought it was that damn entertaining. Moriyama Mirai is awesome. IMO, it was really well-paced and well edited for the first 90%, and then suddenly you hit the ending part and you’re like “Oh, yeah. I’m watching a Japanese movie, aren’t I. Huh.”
I reviewed it a few weeks ago too, though I probably wrote too much.
simoncurrie said
Hi Deanna, that’s quite a review!
I’ve read your Marinerds blog before by following a USS Mariner post or something, I think. And have also seen you around on the Japanese Baseball forum before too 🙂 It’s great to hear that you’ve moved to Tokyo now! Fun city, eh.
Rei said
Smile is cute and funny movie, full of children’s cheering. The players are awesome, even so hard to find their profile (the children who be hockey player i mean). McD must be one of the sponsor because many time show up though smile in 1987 (if i not wrong). make me wanna touch snow soon.